TECHNICAL PUBLICATIONS:

Perceptually-supported image editing of text and graphics

This paper presents a novel image editing program emphasizing easy selection and manipulation of material found in informal, casual documents such as sketches, handwritten notes, whiteboard images, screen snapshots and scanned documents. The program, called ScanScribe, offers four significant advances. First, it presents a new, intuitive model for the maintenance of image objects and groups, along with underlying logic for maintaining these in the course of an editing session. Second, ScanScribe takes advantage of newly developed image processing algorithms to separate foreground markings from a white or light background and thus can automatically render the background tranparent so that image material can be rearranged without occlusion by background pixels. Third, ScanScribe introduces new interface techniques for selecting image objects with a pointing device without resorting to a palette of tool models. Fourth, ScanScribe presents a platform for exploiting image analysis and recognition methods to make perceptually significant structure readily available to the user.